alifbae 's review for:

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

5.0

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"KILL THE BEAST! CUT HIS THROAT! SPILL HIS BLOOD!"

^Found this brilliant piece of art work at deviant art.

What did I think? This is a work of brilliance, sheer frightening brilliance! I remember starting the book and thinking to myself, "Wow... this is about a bunch of kids stranded on an island, big deal!". How wrong I was.

What's frightening about this book isn't how a few children became savages or became uncivilized, it's the process of how it happened. I'm pretty sure they themselves didn't know where they lost themselves, or found themselves if you want to look at it another way (Their true nature if you must). In my opinion, this book is about humanity and civilization and how it's just a facade of sorts. It hints at the idea that no matter how many rules or laws we come up with, we are still animalistic in our true nature; a very morbid view of human life.

“Which is better--to have laws and agree, or to hunt and kill?”

It's a story of how a civilization starts off. It starts with ease and many promises of a prosperous future. They work together and help each other in the beginning, choosing a leader, taking care of those who are unable to take care of themselves and comforting each other. Then their eventual decline begins, when disagreements start to occur, when fear of the unknown starts to break away at the chains that hold their society together, and finally when those chains finally break, the unimaginable happens. Thing is, when their civilized bond of a democratic society breaks, another bond starts, that which takes it roots from fear of higher authorities, a dictatorship of sorts.



You have the Cheif: Raplh is a very confident and natural leader, childish (he is 12 years old you know) but that soon changes. At the later part of the novel

Spoiler

(After Simon's death)

I just couldn't bring myself to think of them as boys anymore. They had witnessed things no one of us in our comfortable lives ever has. They were men, they were men in the body of boys.
I really feel bad for Ralph at the end. He tried his best, but he couldn't do anything against the nature of boys. All that he went through, all that he witnessed, all that he lost. You can't get over that stuff.

“Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.”

You have Piggy: Piggy, that boy was the voice of reason and all things sensible in the group. He wasn't ever taken seriously which just makes me angry and sad at the same time. I mean even when he

Spoiler

died

at the end, everyone still made fun of him. Everyone but Ralph, that was the only time Ralph actually missed him and his counseling and you felt really sad because he lost an important person.

I want to talk about Jack but I wont. I still haven't made up my mind about him yet. For now I will call him the 'stupid-powerhungry-idiot-who-caused-so-much-pain!'

This has the best manifestations of symbolism i've ever encountered. The conch, the reflection of all things holding superficial power; the pigs showing the desire to assign power and value to new things (kind of like an economy) and the beast.

Spoiler

There was no beast, they were the beast themselves, the beast embodied fear of the unknown. It was the voice that told you to not go venture out at night as the night holds terrible things, the beast was the worst thing imaginable to a bunch of 12 year old boys, little did they know that they themselves were their own worst enemy

“We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?”

This offers you something to think about, actually a lot to think about. Agree or disagree with Golding's manifestation of starting a society from scratch you have to give him major props for sending shivers down your spine.



An amazing read, this book is meant to be devoured and digested, read it line by line.